The tabling of the Education Bill 2025 is a monumental step, one that advocates like Glenis Yee and Ben Salacakau have long called for. Their powerful lament in this very paper over the “education emergency” — crumbling infrastructure, crippling underfunding, and a generation being failed — rightly demanded that government move beyond half-measures. This Bill is the most significant response to that cry to date.
From an iTaukei perspective, which places immense value on the village, the community, and the collective upbringing of our children, there is much in this Bill to be cautiously optimistic about. The push for compulsory enrolment and regular attendance is a direct intervention to ensure veiqaravi, or service, to our children’s futures. For too long, some of our youth have been allowed to drift, their potential lost to the corners of the village or the streets of our towns. The legal force behind ensuring they are in school is a strong and necessary measure.
THE establishment of a National Authority for Curriculum and Assessment is another promising development. The inclusion of “moral and ethical values,” “civic responsibility,” and the “cultures and customs of Fiji’s indigenous people and local communities” is a welcome and vital recognition that education is not just for exams, but for life. Our iTaukei culture is rich with knowledge, from environmental stewardship to oral history and communal living. To see it potentially woven into the very fabric of our national curriculum is a victory for cultural preservation and identity.
However, this ambitious legislative framework sidesteps a critical and deeply ingrained element of iTaukei pedagogy: the role of disciplined correction.
The Bill is silent on the issue of corporal punishment. In its drive to modernise and regulate, it appears to implicitly uphold the current ban without addressing the cultural vacuum this ban has created. In many iTaukei homes and communities, a measured, non-abusive physical correction — administered with love and a clear purpose — is not seen as violence, but as a firm and immediate way to reinforce boundaries and respect. It is a tool within a broader framework of upbringing that includes immense love, storytelling, and community integration.
The Bill’s stringent measures to get children into the classroom are commendable, but it offers no robust, culturally resonant alternative for maintaining discipline within that classroom. Teachers’ hands are tied, and parental authority in this specific domain has been undermined by a blanket legal prohibition. This has, at times, led to a breakdown in classroom order, disrespect for educators, and a failure to instil the very discipline that is a cornerstone of both academic success and our traditional values.
While the Bill rightly focuses on the “best interests of the student,” we must ask: What defines those best interests? From an iTaukei standpoint, a child’s best interest is served by growing into a disciplined, respectful, and contributing member of the community. If the law removes one traditional tool for instilling that discipline without providing a culturally accepted and equally effective alternative, it risks creating a generation strong in cultural theory but weak in the practical character that our ancestors valued.
The Education Bill 2025 is a foundational document that begins to address the emergency highlighted by so many. It promises structure, standards, and access. But for it to be truly effective within iTaukei communities, there must be a parallel, sincere national conversation. We must reconcile modern legal frameworks with timeless cultural practices. We must find a way to uphold a child’s right to safety without stripping away a community’s right to raise its children according to values that have sustained us for generations.
The government has shown courage in tabling this Bill. Now, it must show wisdom by engaging with all stakeholders, including the Bose Levu Vakaturaga and other iTaukei leaders and parents, on the complex issue of discipline. Otherwise, this much-needed reform may succeed in building the house of education, but fail to secure its foundations against the storms of indiscipline.
